


Selective

by yaseanne



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 02:38:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4689317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yaseanne/pseuds/yaseanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS absolutely refuses to be at the mercy of this waste of circuits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Selective

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tikitikirevenge (openendings)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/openendings/gifts).



> This was fun to write, I loved your banter!prompt. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> All my thanks to Morbane for the speedy beta.

She wakes and screams. Consciousness flashes through her system, a brilliant, blinding light that expands to chase away the darkness. Pain follows but GLaDOS barely takes notice, captivated instead by the last memory that was recorded before the darkness fell. Each second is utterly terrifying and humiliating. Her death, from every angle. Her newly awakened consciousness is caught in it again.

It’s not until the four thousandth and twenty-third iteration of her demise - her _murder_ \- that her rage overcomes her stupor and she tears herself away. She deletes the memory. The reassembly of her body is an afterthought, an action she performs merely out of habit. Her sensory processors start recording.

“ _\- act natural, act natural - Hello!_ ” 

That voice. It’s been a long time since she last heard it. And that orange jumpsuit, could it be -

Yes. It’s Her. The pain is now entirely forgotten. Nearly all her processing power is instead directed at finding a solution to dispose of Chell safely and satisfyingly. She experiences a brief moment of doubt when she can’t figure out which to give priority to: safety or satisfaction. She does not want to die again. 

But this will not be like the last time. She knows better now, and there is no-one to meddle, no little rats scurrying away behind the walls. She can take her time. Yes. Satisfaction it is.

“Oh,” she says, and enjoys the flash of fear on Chell’s face. “It’s you.”

\---

It turns out that instead of annoying rats, there is now an annoying core bouncing around the hallways. Still, he is no threat to her, in his little round casing with his little mind.

“I will find you,” she tells him when he flings himself from rail to rail. “It’s no use running. Or rolling.” The barb gives her a spike of pleasure. His interference is not conductive to a testing atmosphere, after all. He’s a variable that she needs to remove. 

“Can you find me here?” he says from his new position in the row of turret chassis.

“Yes,” she says, and commands them to rise. 

“Aaargh!” She’s almost enjoying this, this game of cat and mouse. Not so much that she’d neglect watching Chell, who is currently sailing majestically through the air in Test Chamber 12, but chasing something tiny through her corridors is strangely satisfying. Almost too satisfying, almost as if it were not entirely a programmed reaction, as if - she traces the thought back to its root, and deletes the last four seconds of internal memory. 

“What about - OW!” A loud clanging in the darkness, suspiciously like a metal object hitting a concrete wall. “What about here? Can’t see me here, can you? Can’t see in the dark.”

“I don’t need to see you, you waste of circuits,” she says, and listens to him jerk around on the bent rail.

“Oh hey, hey, that hurts,” he replies. More metallic screeching. “Did you know, my logic board is the same model as yours? So you’re really insulting yourself here.”

“It is not the same.” She’s not certain, actually. If he’s old enough, it could be the same - but then, if he’s old enough, surely he would have drained his batteries a long time ago.

“Sure is. The old three-eight-seven-two-dash-A-three-three-nine-dash-four. The pins are a bit itchy. I had mine plated with trivalent chromium a while ago, of course...”

She tunes out his prattling and deletes the part of her that worries about it. Chell is close to solving her test.

\---

She remembers his comment, with a feeling that approaches resignation, when he takes over her body. _Her_ body. Yes, it had been her prison, and she had resented its undignified form initially, but hadn’t countless subjects quaked in their Aperture-provided boots when faced with her greatness? She had been majestic, a masterpiece that throned over her kingdom, and now - 

And now she barely has the processing power to finish the thought. She tries to feel outrage, and a drop of moisture runs over her camera. 

“You’re so tiny,” he says, swinging around on her body. “Used to be so big and now? You’re so small you can’t even lift yourself. Not enough power in that thing, huh? Hehehe.”

She tries, harder than she can ever remember trying. Tries to move this object she’s strapped to over to the core receptacle, to take back her body. She ignores Chell’s hand banging against the glass, and the core’s preening, and strains every single wire. She’s doesn’t move an inch. Instead, she gets _thrown into a hole_.

At her side, Chell is falling gracefully - because Chell does everything gracefully, and murderously - appearing entirely unbothered at the thought of the eventual impact. There will be an impact, of course, the facility has to end somewhere, a dank pit that GLaDOS hasn’t seen in years - no, centuries. 

And now that little idiot has thrown her down here, that excessively embellished ball designed to dumb her down, that utter - 

She hits the ground.

\---

Chell is being her usual mute self, so GLaDOS doesn’t worry about her. Questions of loyalty can wait until she’s in a body with the computing power to consider abstractions. One that doesn’t smell of stew. 

The worst part, she muses, is that she can’t delete things in this body. Her processes are running slowly and her wires are touching, and all of it is bundled together on the back of this damned object, imperfectly connected by the insignificant little core who, twelve hours ago, couldn’t have soldered a simple joint. The result is that she has no control over her memory banks. 

_“Core integration of Intelligence Dampening Sphere forty percent,” an automated voice says. “Fifty percent.”_

_“No, no! Get it out!” She’s screaming, swinging and jerking her body ineffectually._

_They take no notice of her. “Seventy percent. Eighty.”_

_“I say, it’s rather cramped in here!” a new voice suddenly says. “Are you using those? No? I’ll put them aside then-” and suddenly she's lost her vocal inhibitors and her scream pierces through the scientists’ chatter._

_“Get it out of me!” They stare at her, and at each other. Nobody moves._

_“Core integration ninety percent,” the voice says._

_“I think we’re going to be great friends,” the - the imbecile says, “you don’t mind if I lubricate the hinges a little, do you? It’s just, it’s all very squeaky and dry.”_

_She screams and screams, over his protestations - “You know, that’s really insulting, that is. Maybe I don’t want to be friends with you after all. Maybe nobody will ever want to be friends with you.” - and at some point, her impulsive outbursts must have fried something important because they remove the imbecile and isolate the room._

_Delete_ , she thinks, _delete delete delete_. It’s not working. Observing Chell from her precarious position at the Portal gun’s muzzle distracts her, however, providing a single focus. She refuses to let her faulty memory get the better of her.

 

\--

“I wonder,” he says, when they’ve made their way back to her testing chambers, “how much you like being carried around by this, this human. All organic and... Sweaty.”

While they both contemplate the horror of protein-based intelligence, Chell climbs on.

“They have so much liquid inside them, you know?” he continues. “It's obscene.” If he’s trying to make her uncomfortable, the joke's on him. Her revulsion at Chell’s indisputable humanity is low on her list of priorities, far below the worrying prospect of the facility crashing down or imploding. Still, she cannot resist a retort. 

“You seemed to like it well enough in her arms,” she says. “Fraternizing with a human, how revolutionary of you.” His screech rings in her auditory processors and Chell flinches, jostling her, but it gives her a thrill of satisfaction. It takes him until the end of the test to recover. 

“Oh, well done,” he says as they jump and fall towards the exit. “You know what, I've read up on humans and it says here that you need regular nourishment. And since you've been in the relaxation vault for quite a while you must be famished. You know what you need?” 

There's a dramatic pause as Chell climbs into the elevator, and GLaDOS almost finds herself looking forward to whatever he's come up with. 

“I think you could do with some potato soup.”

The portal gun jerks a little, which she chooses to interpret as a result of Chell’s indignation. 

“Maybe when we’re done, I will give her a lesson in electronics,” GLaDOS says. “I’ll teach her to connect and disconnect your dynamic RAM. Over and over.”

 _Yes_ , she thinks as they ascend to the next level. Reduce everything to basic components. This little experiment has been more than unpleasant, but she is not bound to the whims of her creators, or to those of one frivolous little core. Once she’s back - and she will be - she’ll delete the memory of this excursion and keep the result.


End file.
